Money Rituals

Money is like an iron ring we’ve put through our noses. We’ve forgotten
that we designed it and now it is leading us around.
~ Bernard Lietaer(1942 age:75),
Belgian
currency expert

History

Money is a relatively recent invention for the human species. How did
they get along before that?

In a small tribe there were work rôle s for everyone. If someone slacked
social pressure could bring them into line. There was a pecking order. Alpha males got
the first crack at the kill.

Between groups there was barter.

Later, with the rise of civilisations there was a caste system. Depending on which
caste you were born into, you received different privilege and access to goods.

Money As A Caste Tool

The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was
before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the
rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied… but
written off as trash. The twentieth-century consumer economy has produced the first
culture for which a beggar is a reminder of nothing.
~ John Berger(1926 age:91)

I contend that money is a disguised caste tool. Consider:

Money neatly stratifies society. Those at the top get the best foods and cars.
Those at the bottom are forced to eat pesticide-laden and artificial foods with low
nutritive value. Those at the top get acres of living space per person. Those at the
bottom are crammed 12 to a room. There are restaurants and entertainment places where
only the very wealthy are allowed to enter. All the entertainments are graded by which
strata are permitted to enjoy them.

In England your caste is determined by your accent. However, this does not help peg
a foreigner. Money lets others know your proper status, even when they have never heard
of you or your family before.

Money ensures your descendants will enjoy your same privileged caste status. You
can transfer it to them. If you give them enough, even if they do absolutely nothing to
earn more, they can become even wealthier than you just on the interest. Interest on
the public debt is tribute the non-rich pay in perpetuity to the rich to reward them
for having rich ancestors. The deadbeat bond holders are a much bigger drain on the
government than the collective welfare moms. The difference is the law is so rigged
that the government can reduce the money flow to the welfare mom, but not the rich
interest leech.

Just as in a traditional caste system, there are bars to keep people from crossing
caste lines. For example, you need an education to earn serious money, yet that
education is so expensive only wealthy families can afford to educate their young. On
the other hand, a wealthy person can get relatively easily get millions in loans to
bail them out should they get into financial trouble.

There are welfare systems designed to counterbalance the gravity of money which
tends to make the rich richer and the poor poorer, however, the rich always ensure the
poor remain uncomfortably poor. The easiest way for a high caste person to feel exalted
is to make someone lower on the scale even more miserable.

People who will not turn a shovel full of dirt on the project (Muscle Shoals Dam)
nor contribute a pound of material, will collect more money from the United States
that will the People who supply all the material and do all the work.
~ Thomas Alva Edison(1847-02-111931-10-18 age:84)

If Bill Gates or a movie star walked into a McDonald’s restaurant, he does
not need to pay like anyone else. This is a privilege of rank.

Money As Motivator

Money motivates people to do what they otherwise wouldn’t want to do.
~ Philip Slater(1927-05-152013-06-20 age:86)

In any society there are dirty jobs that have to be done, like unclogging
toilets. In theory, money rewards those people willing to tackle the most dangerous or
odious jobs. Strangely though, the people with the cushiest jobs, clipping bond coupons,
for example, earn the most money.

If unpaid household labour performed by both men and women in the United States were
given minimum remuneration, it would equal the entire amount paid out in wages and
salaries by all the corporations in the United States. So much for money as the great
motivator.
~ Philip Slater(1927-05-152013-06-20 age:86)

Money As Favour-Tracking Mechanism

What is money for? In theory, it ensures the
people who do the most work get the lion’s share of the community product.
It’s job is to encourage people to work harder to produce what others want
produced.

You could look on money as a formal way of keeping track of who owes whom a favour.
The favours are transferable. We neurotically keep track of favours as small as a
penny.

Unfortunately, there are thousands of ways to cheat and fool the money system into
thinking it owes you a favour even when you have not done anything for anyone else, e.g.
speculating in currency, counterfeiting, selling shoddy goods, monopolistic price
gouging, lending money at usurious rates…

Further, there are many favours you do for others that the monetary system ignores,
such as a providing a website of useful information, volunteering or donating your time
to charities.

Money as Ritual

Imagine watching a movie where, with special effects, money were
made invisible. You would see people going into stores and collecting goods. The clerk
and customer would pat each other’s hands.

In the bank, the most impressive building in the city, there would be people muttering
to themselves like nuns counting rosaries as they toted up the invisible piles of bills.
You would see some stock brokers sitting at computers all day apparently staring at a
blank screen, but typing furiously.

People who play with money for a living produce nothing. They are a bit like priests
of yore, who handled the sacraments.

At the theatre, people come to petition a woman behind a booth to see if they will be
allowed into the theatre. If you she okays them, she gives them a ticket. She okays
nearly everyone but the young and the scruffy.

Money As Parlour Trick

Money is a sort of magician’s trick to distract
people from noticing their pockets are being picked. It is easiest to understand on a
global level. The United States has about 4.7% of the world’s population and
consumes about 30% of the world’s natural resources. Money is the illusion that
makes people accept this inequality as natural.

Allegory of the Five Gluttons

This global inequity is roughly
analogous to a banquet with 100 guests. All the guests labour and bring food. However,
five guests run about scarfing down the food off 30 other guest’s plates leaving
them with almost none. These five actually laboured less than the rest. The five
gluttonous guests explain their behaviour by saying, "We deserve the generous extra
share of the pie because we are richer. Those 30 other guests had no money so they
deserved nothing." Note the three don’t dispute that all contributed labour
and food to the banquet. They hypnotize their marks by claiming privilege based on
wealth. What is so strange, is nearly everyone buys this con, both rich and poor.

Using economic power, the wealthy nations force the poor ones to labour for them at
slave wages and the slaves are supposed to feel grateful for the work. The poor nations
were much better off in pre-colonial days when they consumed the fruits of their own
labours.

Republicans tax the poor and give tax breaks and loopholes to the wealthy. The poor
then feel ashamed of not having money. They believe they don’t deserve any of the
resource pie. The poor see the lack of money not as evidence of a rip-off, but of being
undeserving.

Money Vs Wealth

Today’s official monetary system has almost nothing to do with real wealth. Just
to give you an idea, 1995 statistics indicate that the volume
of currency exchanged on the global level is $1.3
trillion US per day. This is thirty times more than the daily gross
domestic product (GDP (Gross Domestic Product)) of all the developed countries of the world put
together. of all that volume, only 2 to 3 percent has to do with real trade or
investment; the remainder takes place in the speculative global cyber-casino; currency
trading and speculation, for example. This means the real economy has become relegated
to mere frosting on the speculative cake, an exact reversal of two decades ago.
~ Bernard Lietaer(1942 age:75)The Future of Money

Book referral for The Future of Money: Creating New Wealth, Work and a Wiser World

recommend book⇒The Future of Money: Creating New Wealth, Work and a Wiser World

Bernard Lietaer is a Belgian currency expert who helped design the Euro. He explains how money has become decoupled from real wealth. This accessible book is easier to find in British and European bookstores.

Online bookstores carrying The Future of Money: Creating New Wealth, Work and a Wiser World

Greyed out stores probably do not have the item in stock. Try looking for it with a bookfinder.

Real wealth increases when somebody labours and produces something and decreases when
that product decays or is destroyed. Money is almost fully decoupled from physical
wealth.

Oddly money follows a quite different birth and death plan. Governments can print it
(and spend it) or burn it any time they choose. Printing it has much the same effect as
counterfeiting, decreasing the value of existing money causing inflation. Only a tiny
fraction of the money in circulation is in the form of bills. Most of it the banks
manufacture by a sort of slight of hand. When you deposit $100, they can lend it out. The people who borrow the money keep that
same money in the bank. Therefore that same money can be lent out over and over again.
Each time the banks collect interest. This is how the banks can make fabulous sums of
money even when the difference between interest paid and charged is tiny. On average,
every dollar you deposit is relent out 12 times. Even if the
borrower spends the money, chances are the money ends back up in some bank in another
account, where it can be lent out yet again. The whole thing depends on not everyone
withdrawing their money at once — a bank run, since they have nowhere near enough
reserves in the vaults to cover all the deposits.

Then there is the stock market which is chimera of wealth and money. Speculators bid
up the price of a stock, then sell it in exchange for cash from some other speculator.
Usually the price collapses, leaving the second speculator holding the bag, the victim of
a semi-legal confidence game. However, sometimes the company behind the stock actually
starts paying dividends and the price stays high, reflecting the true wealth of the
corporation.

Summary

Only when the last tree is cut; only when the last river is polluted; only when the
last fish is caught; only then will they realise that you cannot eat money.
~ Cree Indian Proverb

We laugh at the caste system in India even when we have one of our own
which has even finer gradations from most lavish to deliberate degradation. We pretend it
is not a caste system. I see it as just primate pecking order status on a grand scale. We
forget it is just another social game. We tend to treat money as if it had independent
power from the society that plays it.

Mandrake Mechanism

How the federal reserve system creates money out of thin air.
It is a legal form of counterfeiting, that similarly reduces the value of existing money.